


Of Moons and Madness

by T_with_Smutley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death Eaters, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Graphic Description, Horror, Original Character Death(s), Rough Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 09:27:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7709767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/T_with_Smutley/pseuds/T_with_Smutley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a very graphic story. There will be blood, gore, and detailed depictions of violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Moons and Madness

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to try my hand at the whole blood/gore/horror genre. Hopefully, I did alright for the prologue. I will try to make it light hearted here and there with some funny bits thrown in, but I really wanted to see if I could write one. :)

Derek Higgins was a simple man, living a common ordinary life. He got up, would go to work, get home, and go to sleep. On the weekends he would hang with his chums and get mildly drunk. If he got lucky he would get a woman to keep him and his bed company and warm for the night. He repeated this process day after day, week after week. Being in his late thirties, he was fairly content and at peace with this lifestyle, though many of his buddies had since settled down with wives and children. He just didn’t feel like he could strap himself with a committed relationship and was satisfied with his bachelor ways.

His car foretold of his quiet life. Small and quaint, it was a sensible hatchback with a few cosmetic dings. Clothes littered his backseat,  a napkin or used paper cup peaked through his pigsty.

The thoughts that whirled in his head were entirely over his mildly stressful day at work. It completely consumed him as he drove his mess on wheels through the countryside of Wiltshire.

So he did not expect an emaciated woman completely nude like the day she came out of her mother's womb to hobble out of the woods with one bloodied and broken leg dragging behind her. She screamed and waved her arms frantically with what appeared to be too small of a walking stick in one hand.  She had stumbled out when he was almost on top of her so he could see the mud and blood smeared all over her fair skin, gnarls through her hair, and the dark streaks through the dirt on her face that told her hysterical cries. 

Derek slammed on the brakes and they screeched at the force. He was almost petrified he wouldn't stop in time. He could have kissed his brakes when they stopped just shy of ramming into the desperate woman's legs. The bumper gently caressed her good knee.

Slamming her palms onto the hood of the vehicle,  she swayed a little. Telling signs that she was under the influence of some sort. 

His ire rose as his heart gradually slowed down. He shoved his door open with a mite too much force than intended, which was indicated by the protesting metallic groans. He hoisted himself out of the car,  or tried as he managed in his anger to choke himself on the seat belt  fastening him to the inside. Almost wrenching the whole belt out, he slammed the car door with such voracity that a thin crack appeared across the window. Grumbling about having to now pay for the damage he stomped over to the bloody woman and screeched in her face. 

“Are you fucking mental?! I could have killed yo-”

“Pleasth! Take me up the s-street!  I-i-e promise I won't boffer you a moment more afta,  but just fah a foo minutes pleasth  take me somewhere far from ‘ere!” She interrupted him,  pleading and grasping her hands together. Her words slurred,  verifying his suspicions.  He pursed his lips in thought. 

“I'll take you to the hospital.” He said after mulling it over.  He made a grab for her upper arm trying not to look at her pert breasts, swaying unbidden before him. She was very thin, and looked frail. Maybe some cleaning up and putting on a few pounds would make her look very attractive,  but for now she look like a half starved skeleton.  

She wrenched back her arm with a surprising strength and shook her head. 

“No! Justh up veh road a ways,  I n-need to get away from ‘ere!  I'll be a sfitting duck of I go to the hoshhpital!” Her big brown doe eyes, made even larger since she was half starved,  begged him silently. She swayed and looked like she just held back an upsurge of bile as her cheeks puffed out.

“But your leg is broken! And you look like your two sheets in the wind!”

“I'll choncern mys-self wif that log lata, and I'm noth dunk, I'm… poisthoned, fer lack of a betta therm, justh pleasth take me somewhere!” Derek blinked in shock,  she would rather roam around on a broken leg, looking inebriated, … no wait, poisoned,  and naked than go to a hospital where she could be warm and fix her busted appendage? 

“Alright,  darlin’ I'll take you. You can leave your stick.” He only meant to gently pry it from her when she grasped the slender piece of wood close to her. He only then noticed it was decoratively carved. 

“I w-would lock to kep m-my schtick pleasth!”

He eyed her speculatively. This girl was insane, an absolute nutter!

It was then that he had made up his mind.  He would take her to the psych ward of hospital, but just not let her know. 

“A...Alright, get in.” He felt a weird pinch in his head, like a headache was coming on, but shook his head lightly to hopefully keep it at bay.

The vagabond hobbled over to the passenger side and got in with an astonishing speed for one with a broken leg. He got into the driver's side, cranked the engine which coughed before sputtering to life. Derek pressed the accelerator slowly,  thanking his lucky stars the sudden stop didn't do any damage. 

It was then he glanced at his fare warily out of the corner of his eye. She was extremely fidgety and kept glancing nervously out the back of the car. He might as well try to keep her mind occupied since she appeared so distressed. Taking a deep breath,  he inclined his head to her without taking his eyes off the road.

“So… uh, Miss…?”

“Hermione.” 

“Miss Hermione,” he nodded in acknowledgement. “What brought you out to these neck of the woods?”

“Hunthing  twip. Ran inta son woof treble.”

“Wolf trouble, huh?” He asked non committedly. He reached back to grab a jumper from his backseat, causing an avalanche of various items to disperse even more behind them. Thrusting the jumper into her arms, effectively rewarding him with a surprised, but grateful expression. 

“Yesth, I goot theparated und ran into son thugsth.” Some of her speech became muffled as she yanked the jumper over her head. 

“Who looked like they tried to rape and poison you. “ He surmissed.

“Prethithly.” He nodded in affirmation again. 

Derek drove with his passenger silently for a spell, thinking of the best way to deliver his fare to the hospital without her going batshit crazy on him. A slight pinch in his brain heralded the onslaught on an unforgiving migraine. Rubbing the heel of his hand on his forehead,  he thought of ways to break the ice with the girl. Thinking of something,  he inclined his head to her again. 

He was about to open his mouth to ask why she looked so thin and hungry when he was abruptly interrupted. 

“You are noth taoking meh thoo the sthyck wad.” She stated coldly. 

“What?” He turned unbelieving eyes to her. Surely he had heard her wrong. She couldn't possibly know he was taking her to the loony bin!

“You are... not.. taoking.. me.. thoo..the..Sthyck..wad.” She enunciated as best she could, taking care to say each word clearly and deliberately. Her words drew a icy finger down his spine and he shivered at how much she was giving him the chills. How had she known?! It wasn't possible!

The car eased to a stop as he reflexively had hit his brakes in his state of utter shock and horror.

“I had asthed you thoo taoke meh a ways und thaot wasth all.” She glared daggers at him. Derek just sat gaping at her for knowing exactly what he had planned to do. His brain, slow to react after such a shock, started to play the present in fast forward, catching his mouth up to where they were. He closed his jaw and shook his head vigorously. Releasing the pedal, he eased the car along down the road again.

“Thought never crossed my mind.” He muttered, forcing his eyes to remain glued to the road. 

“Liar.” She hissed venomously. He flinched at her accusation.

Derek’s eyes shot to her for a moment before doing a double take on the road before him and once again slamming his brakes. The gears protested loudly at the abuse they were being put through tonight. His passenger flew into the dash.

Groaning, the girl who had introduced herself as Hermione rubbed where her body had connected with the car and she glowered at him. 

“Thaot hurth! Whot wasth thaot fo?!” She yelled.  Derek barely heard her as he gazed ahead,  his face ashen. She was about to start admonishing him some more before she realized what had caught his attention. 

There in front of the old car’s weak light beams stood a canine unlike anything Derek had ever seen.

Slick black fur covered its whole body save one strip of grey that ran along the ridge of its back. The grey fur stood up erect like a row of sharp spikes. 

From its mouth gleamed razor sharp fangs dripping with bloodied saliva. The formidable maw was crinkled and bared amidst its apparent snarling. 

He would call it a dog,  but it was much larger and had a more feral air about it. The beast was simply too enormous to even be considered a mere domesticated dog. Even the local bullmastiffs in the countryside couldn't compare. However, he could not quite call it a wolf either. Its sheer bulk was even too large for a wolf. Its stance and eyes suggested a certain intelligence and cunning that simply was not found in a wild animal.

Derek’s memory provided rumors and legends of what the locals called the “Black Shuck”. Supposedly it was supposed to be a big black dog with red eyes. Though the only variation that he could see from those rumors was the strip of grey. For the creature’s eyes immediately jolted Derek’s mind to the image of the Hell Hound. 

Two, red, insane eyes beamed out of the canine’s head almost out of their own luminescence. Oh, they were crazy alright,  but sharp and depicted a knowledge not found in its cousins. Just glancing into the two fiery pits of hell situated on the massive skull indicated as much. 

The snarling beast desisted its growls and cocked its head to the side, appearing almost as if smirking in deranged madness at the pair. It unnerved Derek in a way that no man ever could.

That's when Derek’s brain registered his passenger's hysterical screams beside him. 

“Run ‘im over! Run ‘im over! Drivth! Drivth!” His own lunatic of a passenger had begun beating her small fists on his shoulder,  attempting to wake him up from whatever the horrific spell the creature had over him. 

It was too late. 

There was a screech of metal as something impaled the entire backseat of the car. The crazed girls hysteric shrieks only grew louder.

Derek heard the sickening thuds of several somethings being thrown bodily against the side of the car. Something big and heavy was flung across the windshield, cracking and shattering the glass.

The girl shouted something waving her walking stick around,  but he couldn't hear over the screaming.  Someone was screaming, the noise so heart stopping and chilling that only those within death's bony damning grasp could make such a sound. He only had begun to realize it was his own desperate shrieks, barely discernable over the metallic protests of a door being wrenched off its hinges, when everything when black. Then there was nothing.

 

\--

 

Next morning there was nothing but a small blurb in the paper about a middle aged man brutally murdered in the most bizarre and grotesque way imaginable out in the countryside rut by a hunk of twisted metal that was what was left of his car. The most disturbing part, which the police and reporters had intentionally neglected to mention about his murder, was the position and the state of his body. 

He was on his stomach and at his feet was a skull. His legs had been broken and bent into a circular shape, his arms followed suit. Eyes pointed up, his jaw had been broken, and his mouth split at the corners. A snake had been found, killed, and shoved down his throat. Remarkably, his clothes came out of this relatively unscathed with no tears or bloodied spots.

The whole morbid affair had detectives baffled and horrified by the brutality of the crime. It was clear that he was in the shape of a symbol, but of what they didn't know. 


End file.
